Living with terror: ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's ex-wife tells of 'shallow' marriage to a man who spoke only to give orders. What's it like being married to the world's most-wanted terrorist?

Insight: Saja al-Dulaimi, the ex-wife
of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (pictured), has described the
world's most wanted terrorist as a 'normal family man' who 'loved their
children' but spoke only to give orders

What's it like being married to the world's most-wanted
terrorist?

Ex-wife of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has spoken of their marriage Saja al-Dulaimi called world's most wanted terrorist a 'normal family man' But she told of pair's 'shallow' and unhappy marriage before she left him Al-Dulaimi said her ex 'loved their children' but spoke only to give orders

Read after the cut ...

The
ex-wife of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has described the world's
most wanted terrorist as a 'normal family man' who 'loved their
children' but spoke only to give orders.

Saja
al-Dulaimi told how she met and married who she thought was a
university lecturer, only to discover seven years later he was 'the most
dangerous man in the world.'

Lifting
the lid on what she described as their 'shallow' and unhappy marriage,
al-Dulaimi told how al-Baghdadi had a 'mysterious personality' and she
dared not have discussions with him.

Photo: Expression TV

Tough to live with: Lifting the lid on
what she described as their 'shallow' and unhappy marriage, al-Dulaimi
(pictured) told how al-Baghdadi had a 'mysterious personality' and she
dared not have discussions with him

'I didn't love him,' she told Swedish newspaper Expressen.
'He was an enigmatic person. You couldn't have a discussion or hold a
normal conversation with him … He just asked about things and told me to
fetch things. He gave orders, nothing more.'

Al-Dulaimi
told how al-Baghdadi would disappear for days at a time but she had no
suspicions of his involvement in the Syrian resistance while they were
together.

'He
was a normal family man,' she added. 'How he could become emir of the
most dangerous terrorist organization in the world is a mystery.'

She
said that after her first husband died in an Iraqi resistance group her
uncle approached her father about a potential new husband looking for a
widow.

Al-Dulaimi
then moved her and her young twin boys in with al-Baghdadi and his
first wife and her children, an arrangement she described as 'tough' in
such a small space.

Photo: AljazeeraSaja al-Dulaimi (filmed being released
from prison in Lebanon in December) told how she met and married who
she thought was a university lecturer, only to discover seven years
later he was the leader of ISIS

PhotoP: Aljazeera

Al-Dulaimi said she only knew of what
al-Baghdadi had become when she was arrested in Lebanon in 2014 for
trying to cross the border illegally. She and her new husband had used
forged identity cards

Her
children looked at the ISIS leader as their 'idol', she said, but
al-Dulaimi told how she fled from him after just a few months while
pregnant with a daughter, Hagar.

She claims the last time she spoke to her ex-husband was in 2009 when he asked her to come back and she refused.

Al-Dulaimi
said she only knew of what al-Baghdadi had become when she was arrested
in Lebanon in December 2014 for trying to cross the border illegally.
She and her new husband had used forged identity cards.

'He was an enigmatic person. You couldn't have a discussion or hold a normal conversation with him' - Saja al-Dulaimi on the leader of ISIS

It was then she was shown pictures of al-Baghdadi and asked if she recognised him.

Al-Dulaimi was released by Lebanon a year later in a prisoner swap with Al-Qaeda's Syrian wing.

Fully
veiled and clutching her six-month-old baby, she was shown in live TV
footage with her three children, who were with her in prison, as she was
released as part of a deal brokered by neighbouring Qatar.

In
return for her and 12 Islamists, Lebanon got 16 captured soldiers back
from Al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front, as well as one of the bodies of
the two prisoners they had killed.

She
revealed at the time how she planned to go to Turkey. Al-Dulaimi was
interviewed in a secret location near the Lebanon-Syria border four
months after her release from prison, Expressen said.

She
said she now wants to move West and claims she shouldn't be blamed for
the crimes perpetrated by her ex-husband. 'I could have lived like a
princess. I don't want money. I want to live in freedom,' Al-Dulaimi
said.

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